


Boy's Workin' On Empty

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Financial Issues, Homelessness, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 04:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20521745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Prompt: Financial issues.He hadn't anticipated life out of the Academy to be this hard.





	Boy's Workin' On Empty

Klaus hadn't expected life outside of the Academy to be _this hard._

Of course he hadn't expected it to be all peaches and sunshine, but he hadn't anticipated the true struggle the real world was. Of course Reginald had never taught them anything about money, or budgeting, or jobs, rent, apartments, motels, expenses; anything. He didn't want them to be able to live on their own. He wanted them to depend entirely on the academy, than surviving outside of it.

He should have accepted Diego's offer to join him, he thought. Diego had been the second to leave the academy, less than a year after Vanya. Vanya had left the academy the day of their sixteenth birthday. She left no note, no letters, said no goodbyes. She packed up and left silently in the middle of the night, and they were none the wiser until breakfast. Short of turning seventeen, Diego left. He came into Klaus' room at night, shook him awake, and asked if he wanted to come with him. They could leave together. Figure things out together. Klaus had been scared and uncertain and yes, slightly high, and he had said no, but now he regretted it. He saw himself leave less than six months after Diego, and now it had been just under two months of living out in the real world by himself. 

He hadn't known it would be so hard to find money for food and places to stay each night. Of course he had taken what he could from the academy; loose money and expensive looking things he knew he could pawn. He knew to do that. He knew he would need to. But he had quickly realised that finding two meals a day and a place to sleep at night and clothes as the weather changed was, quite simply, not going to happen. And, of course, the drugs. 

Less than two months in and he had nothing. 

It was dark. The sky overhead was an endless expanse of ink, ocean deep above him, and the city lights were blinding in contrast. But here, in the back of this alleyway that Klaus, seventeen years old and alone, sat on his knees in, the light didn't reach him. He could only just make out the shadowy silhouettes of his limbs as he pulled his pockets inside out and dumped his bag upside down and shook it empty, and he grit his teeth together as he looked at everything. 

A hoodie. He had bought it when it began to get colder and the jacket he had stolen from the academy - Reginald's, he thought, something long and thick but with no hood - wasn't enough by itself to stave off the cold. He would have it on now, but it was soaked from the earlier rain. Gum. Three cigarettes and a lighter. His academy mask that he had, for some god forsaken reason, taken with him. A half empty bottle of water. A receipt from 7-11. Loose change that amounted to less than two dollars. Nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing else. He checked his pockets again.

He had been determined not to end up on the streets. Determined not to sleep in an alleyway. And he wasn't going to, not now.

He gathered his meagre belongings and stood. He walked out of the alleyway and down the street, and Ben followed him. Ben was always with him and had been since his death. Now, he said not a word, following like a shadow behind him. He looked sad. Disappointed. Angry, maybe, at how Klaus was getting himself into such a situation. 

Klaus walked until he came to the nearest pawn shop. 

The bag and mask gave him just over ten dollars. 

It began to rain. Klaus found an overhang by a shop and hunched down onto it, knees high up to his chest, and he held his money in his fist, his wet hoodie in the other. He hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday. He shook, and he wasn't sure if it was from the cold or the hunger or the stress or the withdrawals.

Klaus squeezed his eyes shut against the passing car lights. He wondered how Diego and Vanya were doing. If they were, or had been, in a similar situation.

"You can get something to eat with that," Ben murmured. Klaus opened his eyes and glanced up. Ben repeated himself.

"I know," Klaus uttered in response. 

"You should eat."

"I know." Klaus made no move to get up. 

"Klaus."

"Mhmm."

Ben shuffled silently, unnecessarily clearing his throat. Whatever he was going to say, he lost the courage to say it, and it left them in resounding silence. Another car drove past, briefly splashing Klaus in light.

"I can't use it," Klaus finally said. Ben's head tilted towards him.

"What?"

"I can't use it. The money." His fist holding the meagre change shook pointedly, rattling coins about in his grasp. "Not tonight. I - I need a room." His eyes peered around him. "Need to save this... find more. Get a room before it's too late." He nodded, reinforcing the idea in his head. Again, though, he didn't stand. 

"Klaus?"

"I don't want to sleep in an alley." It was said in hardly above a whisper, stolen quickly by the wind, but Ben still caught it. Klaus looked, suddenly, very young, sitting in the shadow of the doorway he was in, Reginald's coat loose on his thin frame, collar popped up to hide his neck from the chill in the air, and his hair stuck slightly to his forehead, curling with moisture, and his eyes were shadowed and afraid. 

Ben didn't have anything to say. Klaus laid out his money and began to count it, again, and again, and again.

He didn't know what to do. He had absolutely no clue what to do now, and he wasn't going to go back now. 

He had been desperately avoiding the idea of spending a night on the streets. Shoved it away like it wasn't a possibility; he wouldn't find himself in that situation. Yet here he was, with half a bottle of water, cigarettes, and a damp hoodie.

He didn't sleep that night, nor eat, and the night marked the first of many he would spend outside. In a few years, though, he would come to think of it as not that bad. At least that night it hadn't been snowing. At least he hadn't been with strangers. At least he had had _some _money, for the future held nothing better for him. Not for a long time. 


End file.
